Who Needs the World Bank?

This article was written by IWP alumnus Joseph Duggan and published by American Greatness.

NeverTrump Republicans are buoyed by a sense of opportunity following the unexpected announcement on January 7 that World Bank president Jim Yong Kim is resigning in the middle of his second five-year term.

The World Bank and its companion institution, the International Monetary Fund, were established by the United States and our allies during the last days of World War II, in anticipation of what were believed to be essential arrangements for international public finance and monetary systems following an Allied victory.

The head of the commission that designed the World Bank system was the British economist John Maynard Keynes. A key intent of the bank was to make low-cost loans available to poor countries that could not get financing from commercial banks. The bank's shareholders are member governments, which pay in capital and sponsor the bank's bureaucracy and its "poverty reduction" schemes.